


start a love train

by alessandriana



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not actually crack, Post-Canon, Recovery, Shameless Smut, Yuleporn, Yuletide Treat, no actual infidelity, touch-starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:46:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/pseuds/alessandriana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Private Log Entry: Mission Day 707</p><p>I've been back on the Hermes for twenty days now. And holy shit, is it amazing! I'd forgotten how awesome sex is!</p><p>See also: food, but seriously. Sex!</p>
            </blockquote>





	start a love train

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingvoices/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta, egelantier, for the encouragement and hand-holding. ♥
> 
> For the prompt: "That being said, if you wanted to induce some kind of sex pollen situation on board the Hermes and decided to go full-out Ares 3crew orgy, I … would be super down with that." It's not quite sex pollen (I was trying to stay within the structure of the universe) but I hope you enjoy!

Private Log Entry: Mission Day 707

 

I've been back on the Hermes for twenty days now. And holy shit, is it amazing! I'd forgotten how awesome sex is!

See also: food, but seriously. Sex!

Maybe I should back up a bit.

After the stresses of being rocketed off Mars faster than anyone else in the history of manned space travel, day one was spent mostly recovering. I waited for the painkillers to kick in inside Beck's cabin as he went over a bunch of basic medical checks-- making sure I wasn't about to keel over where I sat. That took about thirty minutes, and soon I was flying higher than a kite. Literally, even, since they hadn't turned the gravity back on yet.

The Hermes's shower is a little cubicle off the bunks. It works pretty much like any other shower on Earth; water comes out of a sprayer at the top, you stand under it and use your soap and shampoo (specially formulated to play nice with the water reclaimer) to clean up, and the water is sucked into giant vents along the floor by negative air pressure and returned to the water purifier. Okay, maybe that last bit is a little different from showers on Earth. There's a thirty-gallon limit on each shower, since the supply of hot water isn't very large, but that's enough for a good twenty minutes. And I intended to take full advantage of every one of those.

Beck used the lack of gravity to push me down the hallway again, though I was pretty sure I could move on my own at that point thanks to the painkillers. (Have I mentioned that Vicodin is awesome?) He just shook his head when I told him that, though, and called me an idiot, so I let him do the metaphorical heavy lifting this time. Besides, it meant he got to keep touching me, and after a year and a half with no human contact whatsoever, it turns out I'm a _little_ bit touch starved.

He delivered me to the shower, and no matter how much I didn't want the touching to stop, I still knew where to draw the line. Beck, however, didn't seem to agree. I changed out of my disgusting clothing and wrapped a towel around my hips. When I got into the cubicle and tried to close the door behind me, he reached out, opened it again, and pulled himself inside with me. It was a tight fit. If I'd been my normal weight we'd never have managed it.

"Uh," I said, dumbfounded. Beck, up close, was very... well. Close. He'd taken off his shirt, though not his pants. "What're you doing, buddy?"

"Gotta make sure you don't slip and fall," he said, placing his hands on my bare chest, mostly because there was no other place to put them in the tight space.

"We're weightless," I felt compelled to point out. "What damage could I possible do?" Though honestly, I couldn't stop staring down at his hands. They were warm and soft and my whole body felt like it was narrowing down to the few square inches of that touch.

"You're not supposed to raise your arms above your head," he said. "How're you going to wash your hair?"

"I... hadn't actually thought that far ahead," I admitted.

"Well, then." And Beck reached over and turned the water on, as if that was that. Which I guess it was.

The next few minutes were a little complicated. The shower had been designed to also function in zero g, but definitely not with two people inside; the shampoo container had a tendency to float over our heads and bump against the top of the cubicle, and we kept having to push the globules of water away from our faces so we didn't drown. That would be an ignominious way to go, I reflected, after all the hard work that had been put in to save me, so I concentrated on that and not on how much of Beck was pressed up against me, or how his fingers felt as they worked the shampoo through my hair. It was fine, anyways. Totally platonic, right? Just a buddy helping a guy out. 

Things took a turn about halfway through, once Beck'd finished on my upper body. He leaned down to start in on my legs. This put his head on about the same level as my towel, so close I could practically feel the warmth through it. I had to bite my lip, looking up towards the ceiling so he couldn't see it. _Pure thoughts_ , I repeated to myself. _Pure thoughts_.

Except I'd been alone way, way too long. Pure thoughts were _difficult_. 

He washed my feet and lower legs, taking his time-- the water that exited through the vents was disgusting-- and then he set his hands on my thighs and kept going, using a washcloth to get every. single. inch. Soon he'd reached the edge of the towel, and, well-- look, I hadn't been touched at all in a _year and a half_ , alright? So I got a stiffy, no big deal. Totally natural, Beck was a doctor, he would understand. He'd probably even be glad the starvation hadn't impaired my functionality or something, right?

"I can get the rest!" I informed him, grabbing at his hands as he started lifting the edge of the towel. My voice had risen close to an octave.

"Oh yeah?" Beck glanced up at me through his eyelashes, and I swear to you, he had the filthiest look on his face. Extricating his hand from mine, he reached up underneath the towel, took my dick in hand, and _squeezed_.

"You sure about that?" he asked.

All the blood rushed straight away from my brain. My knees would have gone weak if we'd been in gravity; as it was, I sort of bumped back against the wall. "Oh my god," I said to the ceiling.

Beck grinned, the little asshole, and asked, "Still want to take care of it yourself?"

"No... no, I'm good if you're good," I somehow squeaked.

He tugged the towel the rest of the way off, leaving all of me on display, and went back to using his washcloth. And his hand. My heart was pounding. All of my existence narrowed down into the soft rasp of the cloth against skin. I braced myself on the side walls to keep from floating away, both literally and figuratively.

It took me embarrassingly little time to get to the finish line, coming all over his hand and the washcloth with a sharp little moan I hardly recognized as coming from my own throat. Endorphins washed through me, taking away the last little bit of pain the Vicodin hadn't taken care of. Maybe that had been Beck's reasoning all along. If so, well _done_ , doc.

Beck pushed up from his crouched position and let me lean on his shoulder, gasping, as I recuperated. He brought a hand up and rested it against the pulse in the side of my neck, which was such a Beck thing to do I could cry.  

 "What the fuck, man," I asked, once my brain had come at least partially back online.

"You good?" he asked, completely ignoring the question.

"I-- yeah." Better than good, actually. Holy shit. What a welcome home.

"I'm glad." And then he hugged me, of all things, tight as he could while avoiding squeezing the ribs, and turned off the water, and reached outside the cubicle to grab a dry towel, which he handed off to me to wrap around my waist, and led me out, and there were clean clothes on the chair, and once I'd changed he led me back to his room because mine was apparently roasting or something.

I was nearly asleep as we traversed the hallways, but I did notice as we passed Johanssen in the hallway back to my quarters. And maybe it was just the drugs, but I swear to god I saw Johanssen, passing Beck, throw him a quick thumbs-up.

Then I hit the bed and I was dead to the world.

 

***

 

When I next woke up it was twenty-two hours later and the Vicodin had really, really worn off. There was no moment of thinking I was back on Mars-- the pain was a fairly obvious reminder the rescue hadn't been a dream. I lay there staring at the ceiling and wishing someone had thought to give me a bell or something, because my chest felt like someone had dropped a bowling ball on it, and I was too stiff to even attempt to get up.

I considered screaming, and decided against it. Not because of any stupid pride thing, but because I didn't want to worry anyone. That would be a shitty way to repay them for the rescue. Besides, someone would probably be by soon.

I spent the time trying to decide whether the shower sex had been real or just a byproduct of my drugged brain.

It wasn't much longer-- maybe five minutes-- before the door opened and Martinez poked his head in. Seeing me awake, he grinned, and _hell_ was I glad to see him. "Hey, you're up! How're you feeling?"

"Like Mars spent the last year and a half trying to kill me, how else?" I said, as he went over to the little side table and picked up the glass of water that had apparently been sitting there, along with a bottle of pills. He shook two out into his hand, and brought the whole shebang back to the bed with him. He helped me sit up-- carefully! I tried hard not to cry, and wasn't entirely successful-- and held the glass to my mouth while I swallowed the pills. I leaned back against the wall when I was done, trying to keep from being too obvious about how much I hurt. Someone had turned the gravity back on while I'd slept, and it was not doing good things for my ribs. "How're you doing?" I asked, to distract myself.

"A hell of a lot better now that you're back on the ship, that's for sure." He leaned forward and ruffled my hair, which was a little odd for him but whatever, he was my best friend and I'd nearly died. "So now for the most important question: what do you want for breakfast?"

I stopped with my mouth open. "Breakfast," I said, reverent. My stomach growled audibly. "You mean... something other than a potato?" 

"We've got _lots_ of other things besides potatoes," Martinez said, amused and fond all at once. He reached out and squeezed my knee, and then left it there. A faint line creased my forehead, but the thought of food soon overwhelmed the slight awkwardness. Besides, it felt nice. "What are you in the mood for? Breakfast sausage? Scrambled eggs? Cereal? Hell, there's a lot more than just breakfast foods, too. The resupply mission set us up pretty good."

My mouth was watering, but I forced myself to ask, "Has Beck set any restrictions on what I can eat?" I probably wasn't _quite_ starved enough to need to worry about refeeding syndrome, but my stomach had definitely shrunk, and maybe there were other considerations I didn't know enough about medicine to think about.

"Just to take it slow, and not eat too much at once. Eventually he said he wants to get you up to at least 4000 calories a day so you can regain some of that weight, but in the meantime he doesn't want you getting sick."

"Got it." I could eat _anything_. The world of food opened up in front of me, dizzying. I had to close my eyes and swallow as saliva flooded my mouth. NASA had stocked Hermes with sixty-plus types of entrees, not to mention all the possible side dishes, fruits, vegetables, and desserts, and I'd thought about every single one of them during my time on Mars, fantasizing about everything I'd be able to eat once I got back home. There were literally thousands of combinations I could go for here, and every single one sounded amazing.

Martinez's hand was squeezing my leg, and I realized my heart was pounding, and not in a good way. "Mark?" he prompted, a little worried.

"I have no idea," I confessed. My voice was a little shaky, and more than a little vulnerable. I pressed my hands to my face. "I can't decide, there's too many options." 

Martinez nodded, and then, because he was awesome, patted me on the knee and stood. "I had a feeling you might say that. I'll go grab a couple meal packs; we can split them. That sound good?"

"Sounds great," I said. Martinez smiled crookedly at me. As he went down the hallway, I shouted after him, "Don't forget the coffee!"

Martinez came back bearing one pack of Mexican scrambled eggs and one pack of breakfast sausage, heated up, and a cup of real, honest-to-god coffee. I went straight for the coffee. Its rich, bitter taste rolled around in my mouth, and I perked up as the caffeine started to take effect. God, _so_ much better than caffeine pills. There was only half a cup, though-- I sensed Beck's hand in that-- so after a few sips I set the rest aside.

"Alright, gimme," I said, motioning towards the food packs.

Martinez sat down next to me on the bed. The space was tight, and we were pressed hip to thigh. He tore the ends off the packets to pour them out onto a plate he'd brought. Steam wafted out; the smell of eggs and sausage rose into the air. I nearly moaned, it smelled so good. I dithered for a moment, then went for the eggs.

One bite and I _did_ moan around my fork. The eggs were yellow and creamy, resplendent with a mix of green onions, red pepper, cilantro and cheddar cheese. My second bite went to the sausage, and they were spicy and salty and crumbled on my tongue. I practically inhaled them, chasing every other bite with a sip of coffee. Intellectually, I knew NASA food was hardly gourmet dining, but after months of eating nothing but potatoes, I would have sworn on any religious document provided that it was the best meal I'd ever had in my life.

"Oh my god," I said about ten minutes later, looking down at the nearly empty plate that had somehow appeared before me. Only a few bites were left. My stomach hurt in a dull, pleasant kind of way. It was the first time I could remember being actually, legitimately _full_ in... wow. Almost two years. "Food is _amazing_."

Martinez had watched me eat the entire time with a kind of satisfied intensity, as if every bite I took was doing something for him, too. Now he asked, "Done? Did you want the rest?" and gesturing to my plate.

I looked down at the last few bites, indecisive; there was a large part of me that wanted to keep eating just because the food was there, and my instincts were absolutely _screaming_ that god only knew when I'd be getting more. But my stomach was just on the edge of painful, and intellectually I knew there was a whole kitchen full of food packs on the ship, which even with the six of us we wouldn't be able to finish them all by the time we got back to Earth. Reluctantly, I pushed the plate over to him.

Martinez took my fork and commenced finishing off the last few bites. He chased the last few pieces of egg around the fork with his tongue, then stuck it in his mouth, pulling it out clean with an obscenely wet 'pop'. He kept his eyes on me the entire time.

Abruptly, I realized we were still pressed together, with me leaning against his shoulder and his hip warm against mine.

Martinez set the plate aside and turned to look at me without breaking contact. He set his hand on my back, fingers warm and comforting against the jut of my shoulder blades. I shivered at the touch, and leaned into it just a little, despite myself.

Carefully, Martinez tugged me in towards him, and I went with it, letting him wrap his arm around me. My head drifted down towards his shoulder. We might be best friends, but we'd never been particularly physically demonstrative about it, beyond a kind of stereotypical back-slapping, wisecracking masculinity. Mars had changed lots of things, I guess. Some of them were even for the better.

We sat there for some indeterminate period of time, me listening to the sound of his heartbeat and feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, reveling in the sheer physicality of having another human being around. After a while, though, my ribs started hurting again, a dull ache despite the masking effect of the painkillers. I shifted, made some noise of discomfort, and Martinez immediately pulled away, though he kept his hand splayed against my back. "You alright? How's the ribs?"

I winced. "Oh, y'know, they only hurt every _other_ second," I said.

"Here, let's get you lying down again." Martinez wrapped an arm around me again and helped me shift over until I was on my back, propped up on a couple pillows someone had brought in. (Someone was likely going pillow-less for my sake; NASA, eternally budget-conscious, had only provided the exact number of creature comforts it thought necessary and no more.) I hissed through my teeth; the movement had started all sorts of aches and pains going again. Martinez leaned over. "Mind if I take a look?" he asked, hand hovering over the top button of my shirt.

"Since when did you become a doctor?" I asked, but nodded permission anyways.

"Not a doctor, but I did take about six dozen first aid classes in the military," he said. Martinez's hands were gentle as he went down the line of buttons, undoing each one in turn; I shivered, and tried to pretend to myself it was because of the cool air.

It was Martinez's turn to hiss as he got to the section of broken ribs, about two-thirds of the way down. "Shit, that's really bruising up," he said. His fingers brushed, feather light, against the blue and black pattern on my chest, centered around the two broken ribs. "You look like somebody came after you with a baseball bat."

I laughed. "Mars, the vengeful ex-boyfriend." My eyes drifted closed as he ran his hands over the rest of my chest, more a caress this time than checking. Faint alarm bells started ringing in the back of my mind, but upon further reflection, I decided to ignore them.

His hands drifted lower, to the point where my stomach curved inward from my ribs. "Jesus, you sure did lose a lot of weight," he said, quieter, tracing a line down towards my belly button. I'd eaten enough that there was actually a little bit of a bump there. 

"'Bout fifty pounds, yeah," I said. I'd known I'd been down a lot, but hadn't realized exactly how much until Beck had weighed me yesterday. I hadn't weighed this little since my gawky teenage years, and I'd been six inches shorter then. "Hey, maybe we can market that. The new Mark Watney diet: just add potatoes!"

Martinez set both hands on either side of my head, leaned forward, and kissed me, close mouthed.

The shock kept me still for several long seconds.

Then I relaxed, and let my mouth fall open under his, and the kiss became hot and sweet. His mouth tasted like the breakfast we'd just eaten. His lips were chapped and his goatee tickled. He smelled like the NASA-provided shampoo, and underneath something a little sweaty and male.

This went on for... well, quite a while. I hadn't been kissed in a really long time, and my brain was stuck in a loop of 'oh-god-he's-touching-me-oh-god-he's-kissing-me-does-this-mean-sex?-yay-sex!'. Then he set his hand on the side of my face to get a better angle, and the cold metal of his wedding ring brushed against my skin. Reality intruded. I pushed at his chest, making a muffled noise of protest. He immediately pulled back, though not very far.

"What?" he asked, brow furrowed.

"What? What do you mean, what?! You're married-- your wife-- I will _not_ be a homewrecker!" I protested.

Martinez looked relieved. "Oh, is that all?"

"Is that _all?"_

"Yeah. Don't worry about it. We discussed this, she's cool with it."

"I-- what. I don't even know what to say to that." Wait, no, I did. "You discussed _kissing me_ with your _wife_? _When_? How did this even come up?!"

"I didn't discuss kissing you, I discussed having sex with you; about a month ago; and I feel like I probably shouldn't answer that last one," Martinez answered in sequence. He leaned back in.

"No, I _really_ think we ought to discuss tha-- mmph." The kiss was hotter and wetter this time, open mouthed, and I couldn't help but moan into it. My willpower faded away, replaced by the slide of skin on skin. It'd been way too long since anyone had kissed me like this, and I wasn't immune to the charm of a quality makeout session. It felt good. _I_ felt good. And, well-- I hadn't felt that way in a long time.

This went on for several minutes, slow and gentle and toe-curlingly pleasant. Then Martinez pulled away with a careful nip at my lower lip, brushed kisses down my cheek and jaw, moving lower, and leaned down to lick and suck at the place where jaw met neck. My hand came up to curl involuntarily in the hair at the nape of his neck; it was soft and bristly against my palm, and I stroked it, mesmerized by the sensation.

I hissed through my teeth as he got particularly enthusiastic. "You're going to leave me a goddamn hickey, Martinez. How am I-- supposed to explain that one to the American public, huh, Mr. Hot-Shot Pilot?" 

Martinez pulled back to grin at me, the pupils of his eyes blown wide. "It's a bruise from the rescue, duh," he said.

"Pretty sure there's nothing in the suit to make a bruise ther-- oh, _god_." Martinez had set his teeth in the muscle at the junction between neck and shoulder and _bit down_. Little sparks of pleasure washed across my brain, and I lost track of time for a while, as Martinez moved lower.

When I came back, Martinez had his mouth around my right nipple and was lathing it with his tongue. His left hand was on my other nipple, rolling it between his thumb and finger, being very careful to keep any pressure off my chest. There were these embarrassing, wanton noises coming out of my mouth that I couldn't remember ever hearing myself make before. I was desperately hard, hips rutting up against the soft fabric of my sleep pants as best I could in search of pressure, but it wasn't nearly enough. "C'mon, please," I gasped, trying to use my grip on his hair to move him to where I really wanted him.

 Martinez laughed, low and husky, and completely ignored my pleading. Instead he pulled away from my nipples and moved lower, pressing light kisses along my ribs, my stomach, pausing to swirl his tongue in my bellybutton, which just made me laugh, and tugging down the elastic waistband of my pants so he could suck another hickey into the flesh above my hip. I breathed in short gasps, staring wide-eyed and unseeing at the ceiling, quickly approaching the point of overstimulation. " _Please_ , Rick," I said, and he must have heard the change in my voice, because he pulled back with one last lick and hooked his fingers under the waistband of my pants.

"You good?" he checked.

"I swear to god, if you don't get down there _right this minute--_ "

Martinez slid my pants down my hips, and in one quick movement, leaned down and wrapped his mouth around my dick.

I nearly came right then and there, his mouth hot and wet with just enough suction. He licked up the shaft, swirling his tongue around the head, and used his hand to cover what wouldn't fit in his mouth. He set a slow but steady pace. Heat spread through my belly, curling my toes. I grabbed onto his shoulders to keep myself from grabbing his hair, and then just held on as he worked enthusiastically.

"Where the hell did you learn how to do this?" I gasped, staring blindly at the ceiling as Martinez used his free hand to gently roll my balls between his fingers. "I know you've never sucked dick before, you and Marissa have been together since you were both fifteen."

"Marissa sent me some articles," Martinez said, pulling temporarily off my dick with a wet 'pop'. He kept up with his hand though, steady and slow.

"Your _wife_ sent you some articles," I said in disbelief. "On how to give another man a blowjob."

"What? She thought it sounded hot."

I started laughing, and so my orgasm took me by complete surprise, rolling up through me from my toes to my head as the laughter transformed into a low, choked-off moan. Martinez kept working me through it, pressure just right, with a half-grin on his face, until suddenly it got to be too much and I batted weakly at his hand. He let go, and wiped his hand on the sheets.

I lay there, panting, waiting for my brain to come back online. Nothing hurt anymore; endorphins are wonderful painkillers. Martinez dropped onto his side next to me, watching my face intently. The focused attention was almost as good as the blowjob itself. Absently he dropped his hand to his crotch, where his own erection was tenting the front of his pants. After a few moments I waved a hand in that direction. "C'mere."

"You don't have to." 

"Jesus Christ, Martinez, you just gave me one of the best blowjobs of my life. I want to."

Martinez rolled over and kissed me again, and at that angle I was able to reach up and get my hand into his pants without worrying about it screwing with my ribs. His dick was thick and hard, a warm heavy weight in my hand, and I stroked it experimentally. It wasn't like I'd never slept with a guy before-- hey, it was the future, and bisexuality was a thing-- but it had been a few years, and I was out of practice with... well, pretty much everything. But Martinez groaned into and rolled his hips into my hand, so I couldn't have been doing _too_ badly.

I managed to strike up a pace that didn't put too much pressure on my ribs but was still enough for Martinez; he was making all sorts of noises into my mouth, hot and panting, and it occurred to me that he'd been without sex nearly as long as I had. It didn't take long. He tensed up and came into my hand without warning, hips stuttering out the last few strokes as his dick pulsed warm and sticky all over the inside of his pants.

"God," he said, and carefully collapsed off onto his side, though he left his arm wrapped around my waist.

"I know I am, but what are you?" Okay, so I get a little goofy after coming. I pulled my hand out of Martinez's pants and wiped them off on a spare bit of the sheets. We'd have to change them later-- and hope Lewis wasn't around to wonder why. "Oh, that reminds me. I had to use your cross to make water back on Mars, sorry about that. It didn't survive the process."

There was a skeptical silence. My eyes were drifting closed, but I could hear the raised eyebrows in Martinez's voice. "What, did Jesus himself come out of the cross and make water for you?" he asked. "Should I be talking to the Pope about a miracle?"

I forced my eyes open. "Nope, just plain old science. I used a catalyst to turn hydrazine into hydrogen, and then I used the cross to burn the hydrogen. Et voila: water."

Martinez went still for a moment. "Mark... you are a crazy ass bastard," he said, deeply sincere.

 "Yes, and?"

Martinez sighed. "In this case I think Jesus will probably forgive you. Since you were doing it to save your life and all. You owe me a new cross, though."

"Will do. Remind me in another eight months, when I can actually buy things again." The lassitude of a good orgasm was stealing over me, and my brain was going offline. All I could do was shift until my head was on the pillow and let my eyes drift closed.

"You falling back asleep?" Martinez asked.

"Mmph." I waved a hand lazily.

"I'll take that as a yes."

His weight shifted on the bed; I opened my eyes again to see him starting to swing his legs over the side of the bed in preparation for getting up. "Wait." I didn't even realize I was going to say it until I'd said it. My pulse had picked up again, I noticed distantly.

He stopped and looked over with raised eyebrows.

"Is anyone gonna be looking for you in the next couple hours?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I've been given direct orders to keep an eye on you for the next six, so no. Why?"

I swallowed. It was hard to bring myself to ask. I'd been alone-- and fine, though it hadn't been easy-- on Mars for the last year and a half. So why was my heart pounding at the idea of him leaving me in here by myself?

Martinez's expression, watching me, softened. "Want me to stick around?" he asked.

"...Please." My voice came out hoarse and miserably embarrassed, but it was worth it when Martinez immediately swung his legs back into bed and scrunched down until he was horizontal. I shifted over, and we spent a few moments negotiating whose limbs went where. It was a tight fit, but we made it work. In the end Martinez was curled up beside me with his leg thrown over mine and his face pressed into the curve of my neck and shoulder; if I tilted my head I could feel the prickle of his hair against my cheek and smell the scent of the NASA issued shampoo.

It was nothing like being on Mars. I fell asleep easily.

 

***

 

I woke up once about an hour later, in one of those slow-motion nightmares I get sometimes where there's a leak in the Hab and I have to get it sealed before the potatoes die but the Hab canvas has fallen all around me, trapping me and I have to fight past it at every step-- but Martinez was there, petting my face, talking me down, and overall just being very obnoxiously _present_ , and after a while I managed to calm down and go back to sleep.

 

***

 

The next couple of days were spent with me mostly sleeping, waking to eat, and then sleeping some more. The launch had really taken it out of me, I guess. Well, that and the broken ribs and the months of serious malnutrition, hey. Martinez mostly stuck around. I wasn't sure how he'd explained it to the others, but no one seemed surprised to see him there when they came by to visit, so he must have cleared it with Lewis. I couldn't complain; we didn't have sex again after that first time, but the constant physical contact was just as good. I was pretty sure I was going to get tired of being around other people eventually, but that hadn't happened yet.

Sometime in the middle of the night on the third day (mission day 690!), I woke up, desperately needing to pee. Martinez was still asleep. The clock read 0418. I'd been out for about six hours total this time.

Utilizing all my ninja skills, I somehow managed to extricate myself from the sleeping lump that was Martinez without disturbing him or killing my ribs. It helped that Martinez is a heavy sleeper. Beck's extra clothing was folded up in the storage space under the bed so I stole a clean pair of pants and buttoned my shirt over them. Then I slipped out the door.

The halls were empty. Duty days typically started at 0800, so everyone else was probably still asleep, even the early risers like Lewis. I, however, was still on Martian Standard Time, and considering I'd slept forty-four hours out of the last forty-eight, I was fairly wide awake. The painkillers were still holding, so even my ribs didn't feel too bad.

The bathroom-- only one for all six of us; it was just like being back in my college dorms, up to and including the weird smells and the inability to leave your personal items behind without someone else stealing them-- was down at the end of the corridor, far enough away from the nearest bunk that the sound of a midnight flush didn't disturb anyone. I did my business, trying studiously to avoid looking in the mirror. I'd been too busy on Mars to much bother with the whole Narcissus routine, and now... well, there was something disturbing about looking in the mirror and not recognizing yourself.

I couldn't help but catch a glimpse of my face as I washed my hands, though, and the dark red bruise at the corner of my neck caught my eye. It took me a moment to remember where it had come from from, but when I did the memory-- _Martinez's mouth on my neck, the sharp sting of blood rising to the surface_ \-- sent a bolt of arousal right through me, thoroughly distracting me from whatever it was I'd been thinking about before.

Hell. Maybe that'd been Martinez's reasoning all along.

...And Beck's.

I squinted suspiciously at myself in the mirror. I'd never been such hot stuff that two separate people would jump me within hours of each other, even if they were just _that_ thrilled to get me back. And I _definitely_ was not hot stuff right now. Something was off here.

I pondered this mystery for a few minutes, then shrugged. Well, whatever. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Even if the gift horse was offering extremely suspiciously timed sex. I'd been alone for the last five hundred and fifty-eight days, even gift horses were welcome company.

Okay, it was possible that metaphor had gotten a bit away from me there.

I stepped out into the hallway, intending to go back to my room, but I wasn't tired anymore. I hadn't stepped foot on the Hermes in a year and a half, and I wanted to see what had changed.

First stop, my old quarters. One peek inside and it became obvious why I was now staying in Beck's; the room was roasting, 35 C at least, and it had been filled with cargo packs. I ran my hands over the walls until I found the problem: the tubing inside the bulkhead wasn't running nearly as much coolant as it ought to be. It was probably clogged somehow. (We're in space, so you'd think that keeping things cool would be the least of our problems, but in reality the equipment on the Hermes produces a ton of heat, and the shielding that keeps radiation out is also great at keeping heat in. You end up with big temperature gradients between the outer skin of the ship, where it's cold, and the internals, where it's hot. The solution lies in having an equalizing system throughout the ship that constantly cycles coolant from the outside of the ship, where space drops the temperature of the coolant, and brings it into the center of the ship, where the equipment transfers excess heat into it. Kind of like the way the atmospheric regulator took advantage of Mars' atmosphere to supercool the air.)

Maybe I'd come back later in the day and see what I could do about that. It would be complicated to fix, without being able to get into the hull, but I had a few ideas. Plus it would give me a project, something to do to make me feel useful.

I continued on with my ship's tour.

Martinez's room was just as badly off as mine was, which explained why he was currently staying with me in Beck's. That didn't explain where Beck was staying, though.

Pausing outside of Johanssen's door, though, made that one a lot more obvious. I hurried down the hallway, away from the soft sounds of sex, before I popped an awkward Peeping Tom boner.

Wow. So they'd actually done something about my advice!

... or else there was some sort of sex pollen on board. Maybe something I'd tracked in from Mars? That would explain why both Beck and Martinez had jumped me, actually.

Except for the part where I wasn't in some weird science fiction novel and sex pollen didn't actually exist.

Vogel and Lewis's doors were closed, and the last thing I wanted to do was disturb them. They'd been working hard the last couple days while I'd been asleep, checking to make sure the ship hadn't been affected by the explosive decompression. I hurried on past.

From there, it was the labs-- I paused to check over my beautiful ferns, which were doing adequately if not spectacularly under Beck's care-- the reactor room, the rec room, the bridge, the miles of cargo... very little had changed since I'd left, though it had been a year and a half. Things were starting to show wear, definitely. Things had been moved, things had been changed around (or blown around, if they hadn't been tied down during the decompression), but the bones of the place were all still the same as the last time I'd been here. Except for Airlock 2, of course, which had a gaping hole in the inner door, over which someone had welded one of the Hermes' patch kits. (Much more hefty than the Hab patch kits, they'd been designed to seal off any holes in the Hermes in the case of meteorite strike. They worked equally well with the aftermath of a bomb, apparently.) Something in me relaxed, seeing that. I hadn't like the idea of having only one seal between me and space.

And on the bright side, the explosive decompression had gotten rid of the weird smell that had built up in the Hermes over the last three Ares missions.

The path eventually led me back to the tiny kitchen, with the cargo room just off it that held all the food. A part of me knew that this was the end destination of my impromptu tour of the Hermes, the real reason I'd bothered to get out of bed.

There was no door-- why bother lifting the extra weight into orbit?-- but the lights were off inside and it was impossible to make out anything against the bright light of the kitchen but a pitch black empty space.

 I paused just outside the doorway, heart rate unaccountably rising. It was just the food storage, so why...?

 _Just_ the food storage. Even I could psychoanalyze that one. I shook my head and flipped the light on before I could stress too much more about it ( _visions of the room being empty, us all trapped here and the food I'd been eating was the last we had on board and we were all going to die--_ )

The room was entirely full. Packs of food in NASA-approved containers were stacked nearly to the ceiling.

I ran my hands over the nearest box, stomach clenching around an enormity of relief which I did my best to ignore. _Beef Ravioli_ , said the little printed label on the side. It was stacked between _Beef Fajitas_ and above _Beef Steak_. On the other side of the room, _Shrimp Fried Rice_ sat next to _Smoked Turkey_ and _Spaghetti w/ Meat Sauce_. There were over a hundred other boxes, each with forty packs of food in each, for at least 4200 food packs-- three meals a day for six people was eighteen a day, multiplied by the 219 days left meant 3942 total meals before we reached Earth-- we had at least 258 extra meals, not even counting extra snacks. And the fact that Johanssen never ate breakfast.

There was plenty of food. We were in space, so there were still lots of ways we could die, but it wouldn't be from starvation.

Something wet dropped on the floor. I looked up, startled-- unexpected water was never a good thing on a spaceship-- but the ceiling was dry. Another droplet hit the floor.

I reached up a hand and realized my face was wet.

When I came back to myself, I was huddled on the floor crying in a way that had only passing resemblance to any crying I'd ever done before. Even the bawling I'd done when I'd managed to get Pathfinder back in contact with Earth had been nothing on this. Every breath was wrenched out of me with a choked-off, nearly-silent sob, so intense that it physically hurt, sharp spikes of pain through my side. I couldn't stop it, couldn't control it, so I could only try to ride it out, hoping desperately that it would be over soon.

Time passed.

"Hey, Mark. Mark, c'mon." Someone was kneeling in front of me, working my hands out from where they were clenched tightly against my chest and holding them between their own, rubbing briskly. They were tiny hands, with the short clean nails of someone who typed for a living-- I looked up and wasn't at all surprised to see Johanssen.

She smiled when I caught her eye. "You back with me?" she asked.

I coughed and tried to clear my throat, but my voice came out thick and hoarse. "Hi." I was still crying helplessly despite the audience, though the outright sobbing had abated. It was like my body had saved up all my tears over the last year and a half and was determined to get them all out now. "Sorry, I can't..." I wiped futilely at my cheeks, but it didn't help. "Sorry," I repeated.

"Hey, no worries. I've cried over NASA's shitty food selection before too, believe me," she said, which made me choke out a laugh. NASA's food was one step up from military MREs, but, well, it wasn't a very big step. Compared to an endless diet of potatoes, though, it was as good as the finest gourmet meals.

"Do you need anything?" she asked, shifting awkwardly on her knees. "Are you feeling alright? If you need something, I can go get it. Or I can go get Beck, if you need him."

"No, I've..." I worked one hand free and waved it broadly, encompassing her, the room full of food, the ship around us, the rest of the crew. "I'm fine. I've got everything I need."

Paradoxically, this just made me start crying harder. 

Johanssen nodded, as if it was perfectly normal for me to be huddled on the floor sobbing over actually having things for once in my life. "Ok. Well, good." She studied me for a moment longer, then carefully lifted my arm and tucked herself in against my side, head resting on my shoulder. It was so out of character for her that I actually froze for a moment. Johanssen was not one for physical affection unless it was with Beck, and even then it was carefully rationed out, to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

She patted me gently on the chest. "Ok, you can go back to crying now," she said, which made me laugh all choked off.

And then, well, I kept on crying.

Eventually I ran out of tears, or I ran out of emotions, or something. I wasn't even sure. But the tears dried up, and I was left feeling exhausted and fragile, like one wrong move would break me. It wasn't a feeling I normally associated with myself, and I couldn't say I liked it.

Johanssen leaned back and gently used the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe the tear tracks off my face. "Better?" she asked.

I waggled my hand back and forth, _so-so_. There was a pit in my chest still that hadn't been helped by the crying, a weird emptiness that wouldn't go away.

Johanssen must have seen something in my face because she reached up and tilted my head towards hers, so our foreheads were pressed together. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the touch. Alright, so I'd had more than my fair share of physical contact the last couple of days, but it still felt like not enough. Like it would never be enough.

Johanssen pulled back after a few minutes. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

I huffed out a laugh, not particularly amused. "I don't think I'm ever not going to be hungry again," I confessed. "When I get back to Earth I'm probably going to eat and eat and eat until I get so fat they'll have to roll me around in a wheelbarrow."

Johanssen set her hands on my too-prominent collarbones and said fiercely, " _Good_."

Then she reached over my shoulder to one of the nearby storage boxes-- _Candy Coated Chocolates_ , it read, the poor man's M&M-- and pulled out a pack, ripping it open with a jerk of her teeth. She fished one out and offered it to me.

My mouth watered. But when I tried to grab it from her hand, she shook her head, and held it up near my mouth instead. 

Carefully, I leaned down and took it in my mouth, my lips brushing her fingers. The candy crunched under my teeth. My eyes fluttered shut and I made an involuntary noise of pleasure as the rich, bittersweet taste of chocolate filled my mouth. God, I'd forgotten how good it was.

I opened my eyes again to see Johanssen holding up another piece of candy. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine as I leaned forward and took it. This time she brushed her finger along my bottom lip before pulling back.

...I had a feeling I knew where this was going.

The third time, she pressed her thumb between my lips and I sucked it the rest of the way in. It was salty and sweet from the candy, and I swirled my tongue around the pad of her finger, chasing the taste.

Johanssen fed me the rest of the pack like that, one piece at a time, and once she'd finished the pack she swung around until she was sitting in my lap and leaned forward to kiss me, chasing the taste of the chocolate around my mouth. She was warm under my hands, all soft curves over hard muscle, and she smelled like something sweet-- lavender, maybe, though I was hardly an expert in the kinds of flowery things girls wore. A lotion, maybe. She must have brought it up as one of her personal items. I cupped her breasts in my hands; they were small but firm, and she made a fantastic noise when I rolled her nipples between my fingers through the cloth.

Boobs were _awesome_.

We made out like that-- slow, lingering -- for a few minutes, and it felt like putting myself back together.

Eventually, however, curiosity got the better of me. I pulled back, lowering my hands to rest on her hips.

"Okay, so, I have to ask," I said. Johanssen raised an eyebrow in inquiry-- and more importantly, _didn't move away_ \-- so I forged on. "What the hell is up with all the sex? Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but this is getting a little bit bizarre. As far as I can tell none of you wanted to jump my bones _before_ we reached Mars." Seriously, I would have noticed. After being trapped in a spaceship with five other people for as long as we'd been, you start eyeing them up. Even the married ones. And okay, there'd been a couple times when I'd thought someone had been eyeing me back, but not in a serious way.

I'm not always the best at figuring out when people are interested, but I don't think I'm _that_ oblivious.

Johanssen's smile was wry. "What, Chris didn't explain?"

I shook my head.

"Why am I not surprised? This was all his idea, you know." She sighed, running her fingers lightly over the plane of my shoulder. "It started maybe four months ago? We had some conversations with Dr. Shields--"

" _Please_ tell me she didn't suggest this," I said, horrified. If she had, it'd be in a _file_ somewhere, and I'd been operating under the assumption that this was a 'what happens in Vegas' kind of thing. Oh, god, were they taking notes? Was someone going to write a paper on this? I did _not_ want to be the subject of another NASA publication 14-307-1792.

" _No_ , jesus." Johanssen glared at me, and I sagged back in relief. "We were having discussions about what to expect when you got back on board. Like, whether you were going to be horribly traumatized, that kind of thing."

"Am I supposed to be?" I asked, fascinated.

"Dr. Shields thought it was a possibility. The rest of us weren't so sure. You're a pretty resilient guy." She brushed her hand over my cheek, leaned in and kissed me on the tip of the nose. "But she did suggest that you'd probably find it difficult to adjust to being back on the Hermes. You've had no one to rely on but yourself for so long that she thought you might have some anxiety issues over letting the rest of us help take care of you. She was worried you might try to do too much too soon and get yourself injured."

I thought back to my earlier decision to look into fixing the cooling issue in my bunk. Even though I had every right to laze around for a while, the thought felt foreign. "She's... probably not wrong," I admitted.

Johanssen squeezed my hand. "So, after the discussion with Dr. Shields, we started talking about ways to keep you distracted. Something that wouldn't be too physically taxing, but would keep you involved... something that would give you something to focus on. Somehow we started talking about physical affection, whether or not you would want that, because it's good for stress relief and oxytocin production. And, well... Beck mentioned that it was too bad you didn't have a significant other on board, because sex would be good for both things."

"Oh my god," I said. Understanding began to dawn.

A quick hint of a smile flashed across Johanssen's face, but she continued, "We brushed it off at the time, but I think we all kept thinking about it. And then Martinez kept joking about it, like he does, and-- I don't know. We started getting competitive. Who would get to do it first, who would do it best, that kind of thing. And it started seeming like a thing we were really doing, instead of just a joke. Like something we actually wanted to do."

"Oh my god," I said again, and put my face in my hands. Suddenly it was all making sense. Astronauts were an insanely competitive lot-- we had to be, to get this far in the death march that was the NASA selection process. Given a bridge to build, we'd make it thirty stories tall with moving sidewalks (and probably stick some rockets on there somehow). In fact, in hindsight I was kind of surprised that I hadn't come home to a group orgy.

"And Commander Lewis was okay with this?" Or had she participated? Should I be expecting to get jumped by her, too??

...Not that I was particularly opposed to that idea, mind you. All of my crew were pretty hot. It was just that she was _Commander Lewis_. She made babies cry! She liked _disco_!

Johanssen shrugged. "She makes this face whenever it comes up, like she isn't sure whether to laugh or to cry. All she's said is that whatever we do it had better not interfere with the mission." She paused. "She's the one that told me and Chris to share our room, though, so I don't think she actually cares what we do on our private time, as long as it doesn't become an issue, or make it back to NASA."

I sighed in relief. "Ok, one more question. So, you and Beck... I have to ask. This isn't something that's going to interfere with that, is it?"

Johanssen smirked. "Oh, trust me, it won't. In fact..." she leaned in, put her mouth right by my ear. "Maybe once you're feeling a little bit better, we can both do you at once."

I squeaked. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. The mental image that conjured up... holy shit.

Johanssen smiled and reached down to palm the front of my pants, where I was definitely hard again. "I had a feeling you'd like that," she said, and leaned forward to kiss me again. "I saw you looking at both of us, you know. On the trip out."

"How could I not? --Nng," I ground out, as she slid down my zipper and reached in to put her hand on my dick. Okay, apparently we were back to the sex thing. Awesome! My hands rose to cup her rear, fingers digging in. "You both are so fucking hot. You _all_ are, jesus."

"Is that why you were so keen on getting us together? A little voyeurism? Did you think about us doing it while you were on Mars?"

My hands stilled, and Johanssen pulled back, sensing something was wrong.

My smile was a probably a little off, but at least it was there. "I tried not to, honestly. It was too depressing. I didn't--" I stopped.

Johanssen frowned. "You didn't what?"

I waited for a second in the vain hope that she'd forget her question, but instead she looked like she was settling in for the long run. I sighed. "I was, oh, 65.7% sure I was going to die there without ever seeing another human being. It was easier to just not think about everything I was missing, so I didn't. Sex especially."

"That's an awfully specific percentage," Johanssen said, playing with the button on my shirt.

I shrugged. "Averaged out. Some days were better, some days were worse."

"What's the worst it got?" she asked, very soft.

I hesitated; she sharply poked me in the chest.

"Ow!" I rubbed at the spot, then admitted, "When the MAV didn't make it all the way up, before you guys came up with a plan. I hit 94%." Even I had realized the Iron Man plan wasn't going to work; I just hadn't wanted to admit it.

Johanssen's eyes were sad when I looked at her. "Well, we _did_ get you back."

"Yeah. You did." I spent a moment running my hands up her hips, her waist, coming to rest just below the curve of her breasts, marveling at the softness. At the fact that I was touching another person. Every moment here was a moment I hadn't expected to get, and it was fantastic. "Now... can we _please_ get back to what we were doing?" I gave her my best set of puppy dog eyes. She snorted, and leaned forward to kiss me again, so I decided to take that as a yes.

Things turned more heated then. I worked my hands under her shirt, across the flat plane of her stomach, tugging it upwards. Johanssen leaned back and did that incredibly sexy thing where she crossed her arms across her front to pull her shirt over her head. I'd never understood how women could do that without messing up their hair. My shirt came unbuttoned easily, and then we disentangled a bit to take care of our respective pants.

A naked Johanssen settled back onto my lap and leaned forward to kiss me again. Hyperaware of every point where we touched, I couldn't figure out where to settle my hands. She finally made a frustrated sound and guided my hand between her legs. She was soaking wet; she moaned as I pressed a finger into her, keeping pressure on her clit with my palm. She rocked against my hand, sliding my fingers deeper with each movement. Soon I added a second finger, and a third; each went in easily, smoothly. It occurred to me that was probably because Beck had done all the pre-work for me not even an hour ago, and I had to swallow as my throat went absolutely dry.

After a few minutes of this she made an impatient noise and ground harder against my hand. "Seriously, if you don't fuck me soon I'm going to hold you down and do it myself," she said, with some irritation.

"I... can do that," I said, a little dazed. I put my hands on her shoulders intending to help swing her down onto the floor, but instead she shook her head.

"You have broken ribs. I get to be on top."

So I slid down onto the floor instead and she swung a leg over my hips. For a few seconds she rubbed my dick up against her clit; then, with a tiny noise of pleasure, she guided herself down onto it.

"Houston, we have contact." I grinned up at the ceiling, reveling in the feeling of her around me.

"Oh my god, you did _not_." She went to punch me, and I crossed my arms in front of my face.

"Hey! Injured here!" I protested.

She settled for flicking me on the nose. Then she _ground_ down with her hips, startling a moan out of me.

After that, my brain was a little too occupied to make terrible jokes.

Johanssen set up a fast pace, and I let her have her wicked way with me, marveling at the beautiful sight of her moving above me. Sweat slid down the curve of her neck, trailing between her breasts as she panted. I ran my hands up her thighs to her hips, reached up to cup her breasts, then trailed down to press my knuckles against the point where my dick entered her. She made interesting noises when I did that, so I did it some more. My own breathing was starting to run harsh, and I was grateful for the lingering effects of the painkillers as my ribs set up a chorus of complaints. It wasn't enough to distract me from the main goal, though, and soon enough both of us were panting and clutching at each other as the rhythm turned ragged.

Johanssen slowed to a stop, pushed up and then down again, and came with her eyes shut and biting her lip. I had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep myself from making too much noise as I felt her clenching around me.

"Beth..." The word came out strangled. I was so close, but I needed just a little more friction to get there. She opened her eyes, grinned lazily down at me, cheeks flushed, and teased, "What, did you want to come or something?"

"Nah, I'm just-- enjoying hanging out here, really--" My eyes were practically crossing from the effort of not thrusting, but my ribs were just at that point where any real effort on my part would make this end too soon, and not in a good way, so I utilized all of my self-control and held absolutely still, though I was sure this kind of torture had to be banned in the Geneva convention somewhere.

"I bet Chris you would be snarky up until the end," she said, satisfied, and then she started _moving_ again, and I felt all my muscles tighten as the orgasm rolled through me, leaving me panting and staring blindly up at the racks around us.

"...Fuck," I said, as Johanssen rolled off to the side, leaving her arm draped around my middle. She grinned into my neck.

"Better?" she asked.

Maybe it was just the endorphins, or the oxytocin or whatever, but I did feel better. More settled into my own skin. "I wholly endorse this as a method of therapy," I said, waving lazily in the air. "We should get the APA to sign off on this one. Mark Watney's official stamp of approval."

"Good." She smiled to herself, pleased and a little smug.

We lay there for a few minutes, recovering, but the floors here had not been designed for comfortable spooning, and eventually my back started kicking up a fuss. I slid out from under Johanssen's arm and started sorting through our clothes. It was a good thing it was only .4 gravity, because otherwise she would have had to help haul me up off the floor. As it was, there was much groaning and grumbling, and Johanssen had to help me get my pants on.

She escorted me back to my bunk, like a good date, and when I turned to shut the door behind me she stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

"Mark..." she spoke softly, in deference to Martinez snoring behind me. Her eyes searched mine. "Hopefully I don't even need to say this, because I am sure the trip back is going to be totally uneventful. But just in case... I can't promise we'll always rescue you, because life sucks and nothing is certain. But there's one thing I can promise, and that is that we will always, _always_ try." She stood on her tippy-toes, put a hand on the side of my face, and carefully pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Night. Sleep well." Then she turned and left.

"'Night," I said belatedly to the empty hallway, as the door to the room she shared with Beck slid shut.

Then I went back to bed. And for the first time since I'd arrived on the Hermes, I didn't dream.

 

***

 

NASA had yet to restore my science privileges, and although technically I was supposed to be writing up my experiences on Mars, I had to admit I wasn't feeling up to sitting over a keyboard for eight hours a day. So most of the next couple weeks consisted of me eating, sleeping, writing for as long as I could stand it, and in the evenings, having fantastic, life-affirming sex. Johannsen and Beck rotated in and out frequently-- sadly, we'd yet to get around to trying Johannsen's suggestion of both of them at once, but hey, there was most of a year left to go-- with Martinez guest starring occasionally. Once he made me sit next to him as he wrote a letter to his wife detailing our escapades in graphic, graphic detail, which eventually ended up with me jacking him off.

For the record, come is difficult to get off of keyboards.

I couldn't tell if Lewis knew about what was going on. If she did, she was a great actor; she gave no indication. (Sadly, there was also no indication that she was interested in joining the fun.) The four of us kept professional during work hours (aside from the occasional bit of groping), and finished all of our assigned tasks. After hours... well.

If nothing else, I was getting plenty of aerobic exercise.

As for Vogel: although he hadn't said anything, or done anything, occasionally when he'd pass me in the hall he'd give me these _looks_ , pure heat, like he wanted to push me up against the wall and fuck me right there. Which I was all for! Wall sex FTW! Except that instead of _doing_ anything about it, he'd just continue on down the hallway. I didn't want to pressure him-- that's a shitty thing to do under any circumstances, but especially when you're going to be trapped on a spaceship with someone for another 200-some odd days, and especially when they're married-- but c'mon! If he hadn't been interested, he should have just kept on acting like he had during the Mars-wards part of the journey, and it would all have been fine. (See: Lewis.) But like this, the constant, sizzling sexual tension was starting to get to me.

Maybe that was all part of his plan; drive me crazy with his wiles. He _was_ a supervillian, after all.

I was in the middle of a fantasy that may or may not have involved Vogel wearing an appropriate supervillian outfit-- I was a bit unclear on the details, not being a comic book fashionista (fashionisto?), but there was definitely spandex involved-- and a damsel-in-distress scenario starring yours truly, when the man himself walked into the room. I was half-hard already, which was a little awkward considering I was in the middle of the kitchen; I'd woken up about half an hour ago, had had a leisurely breakfast (oatmeal and brown sugar, yum-- one of the few meals that was exactly the same in space as it was back on Earth) and was finishing off my coffee. The others had been awake for two hours already (sometimes it was nice to be the injured one), and were coming up on the first break of the day. Vogel usually came in around this time for a morning pick-me-up, before going back to his chemistry experiments.

 Ok, so it was possible I was actually here for a reason. On a stake-out, if you will.

Five minutes after the start of the break, I heard footsteps in the hallway, and so I contrived to lean seductively against the table. Well, as seductively as I could get with broken ribs and while still wearing my pajamas. Walking in, Vogel raked me with his gaze-- my dick twitched in anticipation-- and then... proceeded to go make some tea. Argh! I wasn't going to stand for this-- this _teasing!_ I pushed up from the table, determined to do something about it.

Then I had to just stand still for a moment and clutch at the edge of the table, because just because my ribs are getting better doesn't mean they don't still hurt like fuck when I twist them wrong. I contemplated the utility of screaming, but a more effective mood killer I couldn't imagine.

Vogel was leaning against the counter when I finished white-knuckling through the pain, sipping at his tea. He was staring at the wall, pretending not to have seen my little momentary difficulty; they were all pretty good about giving me privacy when I needed it, actually, though I didn't want it very often.

I waited until I felt steadier on my feet, then picked up my coffee cup for a refill from the pot on the counter. (Hermes had an actual, honest-to-god coffee machine that had been designed to function in low gravity, which was so much better than the shitty coffee packets we'd had to resort to down on Mars-- and infinitely better than my so-called Martian coffee.) I reached around him for the sugar-- there wasn't much left after Vogel's experiment in bomb-making, so I was taking shameless advantage of it while I still could-- and took care to brush up against him while I pulled back with the container. He didn't move away, but he didn't make a move, either. Sigh.

I pulled back and leaned on the counter, stirring the sugar into my coffee. "So... how's the chemical analysis going?"

Not my best pickup line ever, but hey, I was out of practice.

Vogel shrugged. He'd been running tests today on the few soil samples that had already been loaded onto the MAV when they'd had to evac. "There are fewer perchlorates in the soil than expected at that site," he said. "And more nitrogen. This may explain why your potato plants were so successful there."

"Yeah, Beck had said my thyroid numbers looked pretty good for someone who had been rolling around in Martian soil for so long," I said. In addition to being generally hostile to plants, perchlorates prevent iodine uptake, which is critical to thyroid function. The supplements we'd been given contained extra iodine to make up for our minimal exposure, but I'd been on Mars for way longer than originally planned for, and in direct contact with way more dirt than anyone could have anticipated. Beck was probably going to get another paper out of me on that one, in addition to the sixteen others he was already planning.

Vogel reached out and gently tipped my chin back. "No signs of enlarged thyroid," he said, thumb brushing over the skin of my neck just above my collar bone. My breath caught in my throat.

"No?" I managed.

He left his hand there for longer than was strictly necessary, pressing just the slightest bit against my throat. Not enough to restrict my breathing, but enough that I could feel my pulse pounding under his fingertips, and he probably could too. His eyes were locked on mine, and he was standing _way_ too close for propriety's sake. I _knew_ I wasn't misinterpreting this. _Come on_ , I urged him silently. _Get your ass in gear_.

Then he sighed, breath ghosting hot across my skin, and pulled back until there was a respectable distance between us. "No."

I made a strangled noise of pure frustration and threw my hands up in the air. "Oh _for fuck's sake,_ " I said, no longer even pretending that we were talking about thyroids or chemical analysis or what-fucking-ever. "What the hell is the problem? Because I swear to god you've been hitting on me for the last two weeks, only you won't goddamn _do_ anything about it." Vogel opened his mouth to answer, but I rolled right over him. "Is it your wife? Because I totally respect that, dude." I held up my hands.

Vogel's expression was a little amused as he answered, "No, it is not my wife. She does not mind when I sleep with other men, as long as she is the only woman I sleep with."

I blinked, then filed that information away for later. "Then what is it?" I was getting frustrated, so I retreated instead into humor. "What, not interested in this hot bod?" I batted my eyelashes outrageously at him. And alright, so maybe the question was also covering up some self-esteem issues. Who could blame me? I'd never been the best looking guy around, and that had been before I'd lost so much weight I could compete on America's Next Top Model.

Vogel came abruptly towards me and didn't stop, continuing until he'd backed me up against the wall. He was centimeters away, and I could feel his body radiating warmth. He reached out one hand and splayed it-- carefully-- across the spot on my chest where my ribs ached the worst.

"What I am going to do to you requires that you are in better physical shape," he said. I could feel his hot breath ghosting across my ear. "So wait. Rest up. Heal. And be assured it will be worth the wait."

He stepped back, turned on his heel and left the room.

On the way out he brushed past Commander Lewis coming in for coffee, who raised her eyebrow. "What-- oh my god." She winced and shielded her eyes with one hand. "Put that thing away, would you? It's the middle of the day, and you do have work to do, you perv."

I glanced down belatedly at my crotch, where I had apparently developed a very inappropriate boner.

Or, well, technically it was _very_ appropriate.

"Uh, sorry," I said, and carefully waddled out into the hallway, coffee cup in one hand and the other strategically placed. Once safely down the hallway, I glared down at my crotch. "Bad dick," I said, shaking my finger at it. "Not in public!"

My dick, unsurprisingly, didn't listen. In fact, it was quite _enthusiastically_ not listening. I wasn't going to get anything done until I'd taken care of that.

I sighed, finished off my coffee in two quick gulps and went to go locate Martinez.

 

***

 

A month later, my ribs were feeling much better, and the x-rays agreed; Beck was gleeful over all the papers he was going to get out of the effects of low gravity on accelerating healing time.

I'd been thinking about Vogel's offer off and on ever since he'd made it. (Not that I wasn't getting plenty of action elsewhere, but variety is the spice of life, etc etc, and there isn't a lot of variety when you're stuck on a spacecraft the size of an Airbus A380.) Today, however, was the first day where I could really move without my ribs setting up a shit storm. I tested it out by doing a few jumping jacks-- there were only the most minor of twinges from muscles that weren't used to moving like that. 

I was doing better in other ways, too. I'd put on close to ten pounds, and the nights I found myself awake past midnight, panicking about something or other, had dropped to once a week. All the exercise I was getting kept me pretty conked out. (Probably this had been part of Beck's master plan as well.)

Long story short: I was pretty sure I was up for whatever Vogel could bring to the table. Or bed, rather.

I found him in the exercise room at the end of the day; he was running on the treadmill. I wandered over to the mats on the floor-- conveniently in line of sight of the bank of machines-- and did some of the yoga-esque stretching my physical therapist had prescribed me, ostentatiously bending over and reaching for the floor, straightening up and reaching for the sky, and overall just making it obvious that I was feeling better. I could feel Vogel's eyes on me, warm and a little amused, and when the treadmill beeped the end of his run he stepped off, slung a towel around his neck, and came to stand over me. I was on the floor with my legs spread out in a V, attempting to reach my toes. I finished the rep I was doing and then sat up, leaning back on my elbows so I could look him in the face. "Hi," I said brightly.

"Good evening," he said, and reached out a hand to help me up. He didn't let go once I was standing, just kept holding on, hand calloused and strong on mine. "So," he said. "My room or yours?"

 

***

 

"Where the fuck did you get lube," I asked later, as I felt Vogel's finger press into me, slick and warm.

"I _am_ a chemist," Vogel reminded me, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "Lube is water-based. Was not too hard to make."

I made an incoherent noise into the pillow as he added another finger. "I dunno, I'm-- not sure I'm comfortable with you mad-sciencing something that is-- hng-- going into my body," I said, hands clenching in the sheets. Sweat was already starting to slide down my skin. It'd been a long, long time since I'd done the whole anal sex thing. (Good ol' U of C, you taught me more than just my mad botany skills.) Honestly, at the time it hadn't been very far up on the list of my favorite sex acts, but a few minutes in and I was beginning to reevaluate that opinion. Vogel had really talented hands. Really, _really_ talented-- "Jesus fucking Christ," I swore, as he found my prostrate. I closed my eyes and pushed back against him, chasing that sensation. Sparks shivered up my spine to coil in my gut.

Then the rat bastard pulled out! My eyes popped open and I twisted around to look. "What--"

"It isn't wise to do this without lube. If you are not comfortable with it, I can stop." Vogel's expression was completely sincere, and he'd never do anything so crass as smirk, but I could hear it in his voice. 

"You fucking asshole!" 

"I will take that as a no." Vogel went back to work, and I went back to trying not to moan _too_ loudly (Lewis was only three doors down) as things stretched that, wow, had really not stretched like that in a long time. Not that I hadn't considered doing this with some of the others, but the lack of lube (besides an extremely limited supply of Vaseline), and my shitty ribs, had meant that idea had been put on the back burner... so to speak.

After a while of this I started to get impatient, though, no matter how good it felt. I wanted to be fucked! "We getting around to the main act any time soon?" I asked. "I mean, don't get me wrong, this is awesome, but I seem to recall you promising me some real action."

Vogel huffed out a laugh and removed his hand, wiping off on some tissues. “On your back or your stomach?” he asked.

I had to think about that for a moment—both had their appeal—but: “I want to be able to see,” I said.

Vogel sucked in a breath. “That can be arranged,” he said, voice gone a little rough, and helped me flip over onto my back, moving pillows around to accommodate the new position. He settled in between my legs. 

I could feel his dick pressing into me. I was pretty well prepared from all the foreplay but I still had to suck in my breath at the slow burning stretch of it. He paused to ask if I was alright, and I waved impatiently at him. "Don't you _dare_ fucking stop," I gasped out. He snorted, but started pushing forward again, so I didn't really care. I could feel every inch as it slid in. (Bareback, for the record, because all respective STD statuses had been checked and come up good. Also, NASA hadn’t exactly packed condoms.)

I opened my eyes, not entirely sure when I'd closed them, when he stopped moving _again_. I lifted up on my elbows to see what the problem was and stopped, because the answer quickly became apparent. And it wasn't so much a 'problem' as it was 'awesome.' He’d come to the end of the line. Vogel was quite literally balls-deep in my ass. His head was bowed, and his expression was one of intense focus, the kind he usually saved for hard astrophysics problems. I had to admit I liked being the subject of that kind of attention. Every once in a while it was still weird to me that the things I did could actually affect other people.

Experimentally, I shifted and clenched down on his dick. He sucked in a breath and looked up. His eyes were dilated, pupils wide and black in his face, the blue of his iris nearly swallowed up.

“You good?” It was my turn to ask.

“Sorry. I have not done this in a while,” he said, breathless. It was kind of hot. Vogel was one of those people who always seemed totally in control, and seeing him on the verge of losing it was… well. I liked it. “Kids, you know.” He pulled out shallowly, and then pushed back in, startling a too-loud moan from me.

Someone pounded on the other side of the wall—the one farther away from Lewis, thank God, not closer. “Keep it down!” Martinez called, muffled. He paused. “Or let me join in, at least.”

“Later,” I answered just loud enough to carry, and heard Martinez snickering. “Asshole.” I turned back to Vogel. “Okay, you can get back to what you were doing.”

“Your permission is greatly appreciated.” With that particular piece of dry sarcasm out of the way, Vogel leaned forward and gripped me by my hips, fingers digging into the skin-- I was pretty sure I was going to end up with bruises, and I was totally okay with that—and slid out and back in again. The change in angle made it better, deeper. It’s probably cliché to talk about how full I felt, but hey, it’s cliché because it’s true. I clenched my jaw shut and tried not to whimper.

And then, after a few more thrusts to work me up to it… well, Vogel proceeded to fuck me through the mattress.

I could see why he had wanted to wait for this until my ribs had healed. The thrusting would not have been particularly pleasant, and you had to use your stomach muscles more than I’d ever realized. Even now I could feel a few distant aches, which were easily ignorable, considering everything else that was going on-- all my nerve endings at present moment seemed to lead directly from my ass to my dick. I clenched my hands in the sheets, despite the urge to help him along. I really did not want this to be over yet.

“I think--” I stopped, and had to start again, as my breath went out from me in a rush— “I feel like this is the point where I’m supposed to make a Uranus joke—ah, Christ.” I shifted on the bed until I could wrap my legs around his waist, and holy _shit_. For the record… the prostrate is officially my new favorite organ. (Sorry, stomach, you’ve been demoted.) I’d never been this hard in my _life_ , and no one had even touched my dick yet. I didn’t think I could actually come from it, but it felt so good on its own I didn’t really care.

Vogel’s legs were trembling, and there was sweat sliding down his face. He still managed to give me an arch look. “Feel free to try,” he said. I could read the implied threat there. Vogel was not a fan of puns.

I panted silently for a moment, then said, “Can’t think of one anyways.”

“Wise choice,” Vogel said. I could tell he was close. Mostly because the next thing he said was, “Watney, I’m going to—”

“Go for it,” I said, and helpfully clenched down. Vogel made a strangled noise and leaned down to kiss me as he came in a sudden rush of warmth, beard bristly against my mouth. I grabbed his shoulders and held on as the position trapped my dick between our bodies— _finally_ some friction, thank god!—rutting up into the touch like some kind of teenager. Then he reached between us and actually grabbed my dick, and three quick pulls later _hello_ , that was it for me, too.

Eventually my vision cleared, and I realized I was staring up at the ceiling. One of my hand was clenched in the short, soft hair at the base of Vogel’s neck; the other was stroking up and down his spine unconsciously. His weight pressed me into the mattress, but I was too comfortable to shove him off.

“Congrats,” I said.

Vogel lifted his face off my shoulder and squinted blearily at me. “Wofür—Excuse me. What for?” Huh. Apparently fucking brought out the German in him.

“Well, you’re the only person known to have ever explored both Mars _and_ Uranus—!” I yelped as he smacked me on the only place he could reach, my upper thigh. I couldn’t help but grinning.

“Go to sleep, Watney,” he said, and closed his eyes. “You can make all the terrible jokes you want in the morning.”

 

***

 

**Epilogue:**

 

NASA did not, sadly, welcome our crew home with a party. No, instead we got hauled off into isolation and recovery, because even with the limited gravity we'd had on the Hermes, getting used to full gravity again was difficult, and they wanted to monitor our immune responses as we were reintroduced to Earth bacteria.

The rest of the Ares 3 crew got set free before I did. Johanssen and Beck went to introduce each other to their parents; Martinez and Vogel went home to their wives, and Lewis to her husband. In the meantime, I got to hang around at NASA some more. My parents were in town, which was great. There may or may not have been crying at our reunion. (Mostly on my part.)

Eventually, though, NASA had done all they could do, tested everything they could test and scienced everything they could science, and had finally, finally, decided to release me into the wild. (With the provision, of course, that I come back on a regular basis for check ups.)

Word had made it out to the media somehow that I was being released, and the parking lot outside of the astronaut rehab facility was packed full with news vans and reporters. Quadcopters were thick in the air, transmitting video footage back to the audiences watching at home. It was insane. It was like a swarm of piranhas. I'd never seen anything quite like it. The Ares 3 launch had had press, of course, and I'd done my fair share of interviews, but there had been nothing on this order of magnitude.

"That's because you're a fucking hero," Martinez told me. They'd all come back for my release, the sentimental dorks, and we were going to have the party that we hadn't been able to when we'd first landed.

I kept running into that phrasing. "Aren't heroes supposed to have done something for the good of mankind?" I snorted. "All I did was _not die_."

"Well, if you had died the Ares program would probably have been canceled, so there's that," Martinez said. "Also, NASA's budget this year is twice last year's. Guess all that press did some good after all, huh?"

"Hmm... maybe," I said, still unconvinced. But I had a feeling I was going to have to get used to the word, whether I liked it or not.

I still had two hours to go until official release. As time went on the crowd grew larger and larger. Not all of them were press. In fact, most of them weren't. We were on a secure NASA facility, so these all had to be NASA employees. I swallowed a lump in my throat. These were the people who had spent the last three years working their assess off to make sure I survived. I wanted to see them and thank them, but... not like this. I hadn't seen this many people in one place since the last time I'd hit up ComicCon, and I'd lost most of my tolerance for crowds. Hell, I'd lost my tolerance for groups of people bigger than six, to be exact.

Martinez was watching me with a concerned wrinkle between his eyes. I hated being looked at like that, so I straightened my shoulders and turned away from the window, trying to look unaffected. "So what's the plan?" I asked.

Martinez flicked the curtain aside so he could see better. "Well, it _had_ been to pull a car up front and then drive you to my place." Martinez was the only one who actually lived in town, and I still had some tests I needed to come back here for every couple of days. We'd planned a party for that evening, just for the Ares 3 crew, a holy-shit-we-survived-thank-you-god party. "But I'm starting to think that's not the best idea. You could get crushed to death out there." He frowned and pulled out his cell phone. "Gimme a sec, would you?" he said, and walked away.

I turned back to the window, chewing on my lip.

 

***

 

Two hours later, a window at the front of the rehab facility opened, and someone who was clearly Mark Watney leaned out, wearing a hat, with a pair of sunglasses clipped to the neck of his shirt. He grinned and waved enthusiastically at his audience, who responded by setting up a cheer that could be heard throughout the entire building. He did some mugging for the cameras, throwing his arm around the man beside him, fellow astronaut Rick Martinez. After about ten minutes of this he closed the window and left.

Fifteen minutes later, a man wearing the same clothing and hat and now with the sunglasses planted firmly on his face came out the front door of the facility, accompanied by Martinez. He tried to make his way to the waiting car, but the crowd immediately mobbed him, and he was lost to the sight of the cameras. Eventually he managed to squeeze his way through the crowd, shaking hands and returning hugs as he went, and then they slid into the back seat of the car, which slowly, ponderously made its way out of the press of people, turned out the gate, and was gone. A few news vans followed. 

An hour later the crowd had dispersed. At the back loading area, a nondescript Honda pulled up. The driver in the front seat was a redhead in casual clothing; some relative of one of the workers, perhaps. A man ducked out of the back and looked cautiously from side-to-side; the area was clear, except for a janitor emptying some trash, who shot the man a startled look. The man grinned at him, flashed a peace sign, and ducked into the car.

 

***

 

"Hurry! Drive! They're after us!" I said to the driver, still grinning as I buckled my seat belt.

"I refuse to enable your heist movie fantasies," Lewis said, putting the car into drive and pulling out at a sedate fifteen miles an hour. The janitor watched the car drive off with his jaw still hanging open. He'd dropped his bag of trash, spilling it all over the ground. Man. It was bizarre to have someone react to me like that.

"Did Beck make it out okay?"

"He texted me a few minutes ago. Apparently the news crews followed them as far as the freeway; Martinez lost them in the rush hour traffic, though."

"Good man. He probably has a second career as a race car driver waiting for him now that he's back," I said. "I wonder if anyone noticed the switcheroo?"

"Beck said a few people up close started looking confused, but he got away before anyone could rat him out."

"You realize we are going to start so many conspiracy theories with this one, right?" I said. "'Mark Watney is a fake!'; 'He's been replaced by a lizard person!', etc."

"Oh, those already exist, trust me," Lewis said. "My husband thinks they're hilarious. He's been keeping track of them. You apparently died on Mars, or it was all a grand experiment in manipulating popular opinion so we wouldn't notice the government had been taken over by actual Martians." She met my eyes in the rearview mirror. "Oh, and my personal favorite: apparently the entire crew is fucking. Like bunnies."

"Er," I said, frozen. For once in my life I was at a complete and total loss for words.

She let me stew in that one for a while. The awkward silence in the car grew unbearable. Finally I ventured, "So... you noticed, huh."

"A piece of advice, Mark: whatever you decide to do in your future career, don't become a spy." She let out a sigh. "Yes; I noticed. I noticed _all. the. fucking. time_. I swear to god you must have picked some kind of aphrodisiac up from Mars, because I haven't seen five people screw that much since I was in college."

I rubbed my mouth to keep the smile from showing. "I don't think I even had that much sex in college," I confessed. "I was too busy trying not to cry from taking twenty credit hours a semester."

"Mhmm." I glanced over at her profile, which showed mostly irritation. How must it have felt, to have to spend 211 days cooped up in an X-rated reproduction of the Love Boat?

Actually, that was a 70's TV show, she'd probably loved it.

"You know... you could have joined us, if you'd wanted to." I waggled my eyebrows at her.

She shook her head. "No, I couldn't have. I was your commander, it wouldn't have been ethical."

"Yeah, you're probably right." There was something about the way she'd phrased that, though. 'Was' our commander. 'Wouldn't have been' ethical. All in the past tense.

It had been made known to us on our return to Earth that none of us would be going up into space again. For me, it was a health and sanity issue (and frankly, I was fine with that. Mars could kiss my ass.) For the others, it was allegedly because we'd exceeded the lifetime space radiation exposure limits thanks to our excess time in space, but in reality it was a subtle punishment for the Hermes mutiny. Martinez, when I'd asked him if he was okay with that-- he'd been set on continuing his career with outer space in some capacity or another-- had just shrugged. "Worth it, bro. Worth it. And hey, SpaceX is always looking for new pilots."

But that meant that the Ares 3 crew had officially been disbanded. Lewis was no longer our commander. And it would no longer be a breach of ethics to have sex with her.

You know, just sayin'.

"So... Here's the thing," I said, after some quick calculations. "I don't know whether the whole crew sex thing is going to keep happening or not now that we're back on Earth." We'd sort of strenuously avoided talking about it, actually. Having sex with someone forty million kilometers away from your significant other is a bit different than having sex with someone on the same planet as them, and I had a feeling there had been a lot of talking going on between Martinez, Vogel and their respective wives lately. "If it doesn't, that's fine. What happened on the Hermes stays on the Hermes. But if it does... I would just like to point out that you are technically not in charge of us anymore."

     Lewis shifted minutely in her chair, her hands tensing on the wheel, and for a moment I thought she was angry. Then she said, "The thought... had crossed my mind."

"Uh." My brain froze for a moment. "Is that so?" I finished weakly.

We pulled up to a red light; Lewis hit the blinker as we waited to turn left. Then she turned in her seat to look directly at me. She spoke rapidly and with an intensity I'd never heard from her. "Mark. I've spent the last two hundred and eleven days desperately pretending to be both blind and deaf. Every time I'd turn a corner you idiots would be fucking. My self-control is really, really good, but I'm not made of stone." She raked me with her gaze. Her voice was low and rough. "Do you have any idea how many times I had to stop myself from grabbing you by the hair and fucking you against the wall? Make you put that mouth of yours to good use?"

I swallowed. "Wall sex _is_ a lot easier in 0.4g."

Lewis rubbed her hand over her face. "I _know_ , god help me." She shifted again in her seat, and I realized it wasn't because she was uncomfortable or angry, but because she was turned on. Her nipples were clearly outlined against the thin fabric of her shirt.

"Your husband...?" I had to check.

"We've got an open relationship. I just don't usually bother to take advantage of it."

"Lewis. Melissa." I put my hand over my heart, and said with great sincerity, "I would be more than happy to be taken advantage of."

Lewis smiled, and by god it was gorgeous. "I think... I may take you up on that offer."

The light turned green; Lewis pulled into the turn with a squeal of tires. I began to grin. Suddenly, my time on Earth was looking much brighter.

 

***

 

I'd tell you about the party later that evening... but, well, some things don't need to be written down.

I was so fucking glad to be alive. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to apologize for the title. 
> 
> (Love Train, by The O'Jays.)


End file.
